Skokie Debates Smoking Ban

Proposed Restriction Could Be Illinois` Toughest One

Skokie village trustees and impassioned residents debated late into the night Monday, looking at all sides of a proposed ordinance that is said to be the strictest antismoking measure in Illinois.

The ordinance up for consideration would restrict smoking in offices, hotels, transportation waiting areas, theater lobbies and restaurants seating 40 or more patrons, and prohibit smoking in retail stores, reception areas and public restrooms, hallways and meeting rooms.

``We are trying to accommodate both sides here,`` said Skokie Board of Health Director Lowell Huckleberry, who helped write and promote the landmark ordinance. ``No one is saying people can`t smoke. But we say that, where there is a dispute, the rights of the nonsmoker shall prevail.``

Should the measure pass, smokers in most indoor public places will find themselves relegated to special smoking sections. Violators will be subject to fines of up to $500. Exempt from the ordinance will be bars, private residences, bowling alleys and small restaurants.

An overflow crowd of more than 150 concerned residents, many of them wearing antismoking buttons, jammed the board meeting. Proponents of the ordinance cheered loudly for speakers who agreed with them.

Dr. Melvin Chertack of the Skokie Board of Health told the trustees that that the bill ``shouldn`t be emasculated in any way at all. Forget it as a moral issue or personal issue. It`s an issue of health.``

He compared it to ordinances that limit air pollution by curbing leaf-burning out of doors. ``What is tobacco?`` he asked. ``It is a leaf. It is being burned.``

Bills that would have enacted similar smoking restrictions throughout the state failed in both houses of the Illinois General Assembly in May, the third year in a row such legislation has died.

``We`re hopeful that Skokie will get the ball rolling,`` said Madeline Solomon, Chicago Heart Association public-policy director. ``Once we prove this works well in Skokie, other municipalities are almost sure to follow.``

The measure has been opposed by the Washington-based Tobacco Institute, which lobbied against the state bill this spring. ``People who own and manage businesses are perfectly capable of responding to public demand for nonsmoking areas on their own,`` spokesman Walker Merriman said Monday afternoon.

But area opponents of the Skokie ordinance refused offers of assistance from the Tobacco Institute, according to George Lekas, president of the 45-member Skokie Restaurant and Liquor Association and a member of the local board of health.

``We figured it was a local thing,`` said Lekas, owner of the 100-seat Mark III restaurant on Dempster Street. ``Our feeling is that there is very little customer demand for nonsmoking sections right now. We don`t need a law telling us how to please the public.``

``Lose business? Oh yeah!`` said Reinhard Barthel, co-owner of the 400-seat Tower Garden Restaurant on Gross Point Road. ``I`m not opposed to smoking bans per se, but 95 percent of my business comes from out of Skokie. My customers will go elsewhere.``

Barthel said the attempt to institute smoking restrictions was a

``headline grab`` by Skokie. ``Our health department director gets his name in the paper, but we have to live with it,`` he said.

And, to be sure, Huckleberry has had his name in the paper. Proponents of the ordinance, including the ad hoc Skokie Clean Air Coalition which Huckleberry helps lead, were extremely active in the weeks leading up to Monday`s meeting. They coordinated a letter-writing campaign to local newspapers, posted handbills and mailed letters encouraging people to rally at the trustees` meeting, presented a plaque to the owners of Skokie`s Quartet Plaza--the Chicago area`s first large, smoke-free office building--and trotted out health experts at press conferences, where they testified to the health hazards of secondary smoke.

The American Cancer Society estimates that up to 5,000 nonsmokers die each year from inhaling the smoke of the 30 percent of the adult population that smokes.

As Monday`s meeting approached, Ada Kahn, co-leader of the Clean Air Coalition, was confident that public opinion was on the side of tighter controls on smoking, but she was less sure about sentiment on the six-member board of trustees.

``Three of them smoke at meetings,`` she said. ``The new law would prohibit that. It would directly affect them.`` But none of the members was smoking through the first hour of the meeting.

But Kahn said she did not expect the new ordinance to cause drastic changes in most people`s lives, should it pass. ``Many of our restaurants already have nonsmoking sections,`` she said.

Skokie`s law would leave nearby Lincolnwood the odd village out among its near north suburban neighbors: Evanston has tight restrictions on alcohol sales, Morton Grove bans handguns, and now Skokie is trying to clamp down hard on public smoking.